Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
Friday August 15, 2008
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Date: 16th August, 2008 (Saturday)
Time: 14h00 – 16h30
Assembly Point: Mew Way Hall, Lansdowne Road

QQ Section – Tomorrow, the recently formed AbM Western Cape will be hosting a walkabout through Khayeltisha’s informal settlements for Cape Town mayoral committee member Dan Plato and other city officials.

After assembling at Mew Way Hall, we will visit over a dozen informal settlements on foot, including QQ, RR, VT, VV, TR, AT, XA, QA, LB, and YA.

This walkabout will provide the residents of these communities with an opportunity to demonstrate directly to city officials the lack of even rudimentary services in their communities. Residents will be able to show officials what they have and what they lack, what they want and how they want it. It will offer our communities a chance to instil the accountability lacking in the process of upgrading informal settlements.

The purpose of the walkabout is also to demonstrate the failure of the current top-down approach to development, demonstrated in the City’s Master Plan. It follows up on last Saturday’s workshop on the City’s Master Plan, where we gained a better sense of what the plan is and saw for ourselves the ways its top-down approach to community developments in fact undermines communities. Our current lack of services is a direct result of this plan’s failures.

This walkabout also follows our last meeting with Dan Plato on 26 July.

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a community-based and community-controlled movement and we do not believe in this so-called ‘stakeholder approach’ to development which seeks to make top-down government policies seem democratic. We are committed towards seeking alternatives with regard to these neoliberal-based policies which affect people living in informal settlements. We believe in the principles of participatory democracy where such alternatives only come from below and to the left.

For more information, please contact 073-256-2036

http://bushradionews.blogspot.com/2008/08/abahlali-basemjondolo-hosts-walkabout.html

Bush Radio

Abahlali baseMjondolo hosts walkabout of Khayelitsha informal settlements

By Yamkela Xhaso

17 August

Today afternoon, the recently formed Abahlali baseMjondolo hosted through Khayelitsha’s informal settlements or Cape Town mayoral committee member Dan Plato and other city officials.

This walkabout will provide the residents of these communities with an opportunity to demonstrate directly to city officials the lack of even rudimentary services in their communities.

Mzonke Toni of the Anti-Eviction Campaign said,

“Dan Plato was asked to bring along and the main purpose of this walkabout is to go to these informal settlements that are not yet serviced with the foremost services”

Toni added, “We want the people to take the officials around the places that are no serviced so that the officials witness the situation”

“On the other hand, the walkabout is about creating a platform for community leaders to show the officials what kind of service they want and where do they want it?”